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Kerala on the other hand has been facing special issues as they already had
the Akshaya Centers in place, and the main question was how to integrate these
under the CSC umbrella. On the other hand, Punjab had not even issued the RFP
till recently, while Rajasthan, which had completed the entire bidding process,
faced some issues due to which the state had to re-bid the entire CSC program.
It is only now that the states are gaining momentum. Chattisgarh too is
taking concrete steps, as the state was delayed in its SWAN implementation. A
very significant part of the state did not have landline connectivity and,
therefore, having to build a hybrid with VSAT and terrestrial took some time. As
Chandrashekhar says, It was a heterogeneous network and since the SWAN and the
CSCs are to some extent linked, it did have some impact on the CSC project as
well.
Similarly, he adds, there have been some delays in few of the northeastern
states like Meghalaya, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, but these are
now largely under control, except maybe Arunachal Pradesh where there is some
further delay.
However, he adds, in the rest of the states the implementations are is well
under way, which is how selection for more than 90,000 CSC SCA is over, and
60,000 physical implementations have started.
| Building a rural service delivery
module is what is going to take time
Admitting that there have been delays, Aruna
Sundararajan feels these are initial hiccups any project of such huge scale
will face. Largely, Sundararajan expects all one lakh CSCs to be up by the
end of the current financial year. she talks to Dataquests Urvashi Kaul on
the progress of the Common Service Centers project. Excerpts |
How far has the CSC project
gone, in terms of ground level implementation of the Kiosks?
Already 92,000 of the 1 lakh CSCs have been contracted. It means around
20 states have actually completed the bidding process, and selected the
private operators for setting up these Kiosks. The states where CSCs have
been put up include Haryana and Jharkhand. About 90% kiosks are up, and the
companies that have put them up include 3i Infotech, Comat, E-Gov Services,
and Zoom Developers. In some of the other states of Bihar and West Bengal,
the roll out is underway. The companies involved in putting up the kiosks
there include SREI, Wipro and Reliance. In all, Haryana, West Bengal,
Jharkhand and West Bengal together add to close to 7,000 kiosks on the
ground, and Gujarat has about 700 kiosks ready.
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| Aruna Sundararajan,
chief executive officer of the IL&FS project |
By the end of this year we expect
30,000-40,000 CSCs to be completed, and by the end of the April financial
year, we expect all one lakh to be operational.
There have been delays; do you think the
momentum will now pick up?
What takes time is the initial mobilization. Once the infrastructure has
been created at the grass root level, things just flow. All the mainline
states are on track. The big states, except Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, have
not yet finished the process otherwise central, western, southern, and
northeast India have completed the process. Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh are
also expected to finish the process in two-three months time.
Which are the states which are going to
require special focus?
The states that will require special focus will be the northeastern
states, J&K, Himachal Pradesh, and the states with terrain issues. However,
the operators have been selected in the northeast and J&K, and they are now
in the process of putting together the infrastructure. In the northeastern
states it is largely Srei, Comat, and couple of other names. In J&K, it is
one of the big banks.
What are these services that we are
talking about?
IT education services seem to be very popular in Haryana and Uttranchal.
IT skills and basic Internet browsing are currently there along with
e-governance, but I think as they go up the value chain there will be more
advanced applications like even telemedicine.
How many companies are really interested
in developing the rural interface?
It is playing out differently in different places. Like in places
Jharkhand, in one of the kiosks, people were actually using this to download
songs. In another kiosk there are a lot of IT education kits as many kids
are coming in for IT education. In many places language will be a barrier
and maybe Internet browsing, etc, will not be that popular. So, I think, a
lot will depend on how well we are able to customize to local needs, but
clearly education and communication are going to be the big breaks.
How much impact do issues like clarity on
spectrum and broadband connectivity have on the CSC project?
I cant say it is not effecting because CSC roll out has actually been
impacted. The 1 lakh CSCs were divided into three phases: phase one didnt
require any spectrum, wherever BSNL had connectivity in rural stretches,
they were asked to go and upgrade into broadband, and that is happening.
There has been no hitch on the infrastructure side. The remaining 50,000
were linked to spectrum because government had set the goals of broadband
wireless. That is what has been delayed but BSNL has broad spectrum now.
BSNL is getting spectrum connectivity into remote areas, so that issue is
being taken care of. The larger issue is of building a rural service
delivery module and rural business that is going to take time.
How are you addressing the issue of
capacity building and that of mindset change?
The fact is both capacity building and mindset change cannot happen
immediately. It will take time but the idea is value being delivered right
now, the services that they most require, if those are available that is
when they will start coming in, that is what will trigger greater usage. And
this will take some time. |
Who is Monitoring?
The list of states that have already missed a few deadlines is long. Even in
the ones already operational, there is lack of clarity as to when they will
actually start offering the complete bouquet of government services. What
complete rollout actually means is again something which is not very clear.
Whether the state departments are ready to put all their services up, again
lacks clarity. There are questions to which answers are required. Is merely
putting together the infrastructure enough? Or has the center thought of a
mechanism to check whether the services are actually being delivered in these
ICT Kiosks? Most importantly, are the states ready with the services that they
plan to deliver?
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| Yeh Sugam nahi durgam hai,
says Surinder Mohan Prasad |
Interestingly, there is no mechanism that exists at present. Chandrashekhar
explains, At this stage, in fact, there is no state in which the CSCs are more
than two to three months old. Haryana and Jharkhand are the two states where a
large number of CSCs have come up because the process was started at an earlier
stage. In West Bengal some CSCs have come up, and Himachal Pradesh.
Surinder Mohan Prasad, a 70-year old pensioner in Shimla looked in distress
when Dataquest met up with him at one of their functional ICT-Kiosks. Prasad
wanted to get some of his pension details, which he failed to get even after
making three rounds of the Kiosk. On being asked how the CSC, called Sugam in
Himachal, is helping him, this is what he had to say: Yeh Sugam nahi Durgam hai.
The lack of clarity among citizens as to what kind of services are available in
the Kiosk, is again a big issue.
It is not a question of one kiosk where one person is unhappy. The question
which looms large is whether the states are ready to be transparent, and deliver
services that the citizens really need. Not many doubt that the CSC project is a
huge opportunity to touch rural India like never before, but is it a
well-thought out project or is there more to it than meets the eye.
Urvashi Kaul
urvashik@cybermedia.co.in
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